


breathe(or lie, anyway)

by mushmin



Category: Big Bang (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Gen, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 05:02:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17237897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mushmin/pseuds/mushmin
Summary: Point your gun to the complicated world, to the noisy sounds and bang bang bangOr, alternatively:It's been over for a while now, and Seunghyun has felt it all.





	breathe(or lie, anyway)

**Author's Note:**

> So I tried Big Bang out, I hope it turned out okay!! 
> 
> Definitely one of my longer and angstier fics, and this is completely a figment of my imagination. None of this is true by any means, nor does it follow any canonical timeline.
> 
> And comments are always appreciated, roast me if you hated it, I just want to see if I should keep going with Big Bang!

And it's in the alley behind the shop that Seunghyun lets himself breathe for the first time in years. 

He inhales the fumes and smoke, allows them to sit in the core of his stomach, prays they'll take him somewhere far from here, because he is so incredibly tired. 

Tired of it all, tired of the smiling and the husk he has to force into his voice everytime he speaks, tired of the way he has to plume his hair to be respectable enough to exist, tired of existing, tired of being tired, he is so, _so_ tired. 

Most of all though, he thinks he's just stopped seeing the point of it all. It's as if the first few years of their careers were cloudless and they could see their purpose as if it were the sun, so bright it was almost blinding. Now, the clouds have come, and they have no idea where they're going. 

They know they have to go up, but how much further can they go before they burn? 

Seunghyun thinks it's easier for the other members to fly than it is for him. He thinks he must be Icarus with Daedalus' prototype waxen wings when the rest of them have the real thing. Seunghyun thinks this because he can feel himself slipping. 

He can feel himself slipping when he sees Seungri wooing the world with his solo debut, feels it when he watches the variety shows he goes on and the experiences he's had that don't involve the four of them. He thinks he loses half a wing all at once when he hears Seungri laugh about leaving them, and he only seems like he's half joking. 

He can feel a wing give out when Youngbae stops talking to Jiyong--well not exactly _not talking_ , but god, if you were to see how they were before, this is nothing. Youngbae and Jiyong's brotherhood is what kept everyone tied down, every minute knot held together with the force of their united belief in it and now--

Now Seunghyun doesn't know if he's something either of them believe in at all. 

He flaps uselessly when Daesung moves to Japan. Daesung, his best friend, his rock, the only roommate he could stand to keep for longer than five minutes, and more importantly, who was always willing to stand with him, gone. Somewhere Seunghyun couldn't reach beyond phone calls every 2 weeks and by rewatching old variety show clips--not that Seunghyun would ever admit to that, of course. 

He was supposed to be the serious one, but he never could be serious enough to convince them of how much he cared for them. 

And so, it shouldn't have been surprising when he goes into freefall as soon as Jiyong announces that he's leaving Big Bang. There's something else in the announcement, about how his contract had ended and he's _so thankful_ to VIPs and he's doing this to seek something bigger than this. He makes up some bullshit about how BigBang lives forever in his heart. He calls every member out by name. 

_Lee Seunghyun, Kang Daesung, Dong Youngbae_. A pause. _Hyung_. 

Well. Every member but him, but somehow, the way Jiyong's voice breaks when he says that ambiguous word screams Seunghyun's name even more clearly than if he had managed to force the words out. 

And so, Seunghyun falls. In his mind's eye, he can see Jiyong snap his head down to watch him fall, sees Daesung stop flapping his wings, sees Youngbae and Seungri reach their arms out as if they could change where he was and what he's done and who he's become. 

He knows they don't recognize him anymore. He doesn't either. But he imagines they reach anyway, half out of the fear of what will happen if they forget about him and half out of the fear of what will happen if they don't. Maybe they turn only to make sure he doesn't learn how to fly without wings.

Maybe, for once, they'll let him not be the bad guy. Maybe they'll be the bad ones, just this time. 

He knows this is just a fantasy when Jiyong finally returns his call, his voice bitter as he speaks, his mouth just a little too close to the microphone so Seunghyun could hear his teeth gnash before he speaks. 

"What? Why do you keep calling?" 

Seunghyun stays silent. It's nice to hear his voice. There's something about the smell of the alley that always makes him climb up the fire escape of the nearby office building to the roof. It's a way to run when everything starts to mean too much. 

He wishes he had something like that with Jiyong, when every conversation now always felt heavy and laden with the biggest pieces of both of them. 

"Choi Seunghyun, what do you want?"

"Jiyong..." He knows his voice sounds torn as he says it. He stops. Jiyong breathes in, sharply. He thinks he must be something Jiyong wishes he could escape, but there's this vicious cycle that refuses to let either of them be free of the other. "Jiyong, you left." 

Jiyong only laughs. Wryly, bitterly. He always felt everything too strongly, and always made sure everyone involved knew it. 

"Just following in your footsteps, you bastard. Figures that you'd only call any of us back when it's someone else making the mistake." 

Seunghyun stands, shakily. Jiyong can't see the way his knees wobble beneath him, but he draws himself up as confidently as he can anyway. 

"Mistake?" 

"What?" 

"Jiyong, you called it a mistake. Don't do it if it's a mistake, don't do it if you know that now, it's not too late--" 

It's silent for a long time. Seunghyun stays on the line only because he can hear Jiyong breathing on the other end, hard at first, until it became so soft it was barely audible. 

"Will you come back?" 

And oh. There it is. There is the pair of wings he lost, nestled in Jiyong's hope. 

Seunghyun has to sit down, legs hanging over the edge of the roof, breath knocked out of him in the only place he thought he could find it. 

"No." He hears himself say. A bigger part of him wants to say _Yes, yes Jiyong, I'll come when you call_ , but the part of him that refuses is staunch in its belief. It knows exactly why it says no. "I won't come back. But you can. You should." 

"I won't." And Jiyong sounds almost as sure as he is. "You won't. Daesung will be okay, and Youngbae is going to have a family soon. Seungri already talks about us in past tense. We're over, Seunghyun. The dream is over." 

Seunghyun feels something sting in his eye, only recognizes it as a tear when it falls off his chin onto the road fifteen stories below him. 

"I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry, Jiyong." He knows the real apology is in the way his voice shakes and cracks, like it didn't when he first announced that he was leaving Big Bang. 

"You should be." Jiyong says it sharply. "You should be almost as sorry as I am." 

Seunghyun nods. Jiyong cannot see, but somehow, Seunghyun knows he does. 

"It will be okay anyway, Seunghyun." Jiyong continues. 

Seunghyun hangs up. He calls the others. 

Youngbae picks up, all shock and wonder that Seunghyun still had his number, and Seunghyun was about to tell him, but then he hears Hyorin's voice with that smile of hers in it that always made Youngbae smile back, so he lies and says he'll call back tomorrow. He tells Youngbae he loves him, and there's silence for just a second before he hears it back. He knows Youngbae is confused. He is too. 

Seungri doesn't pick up at all. Seunghyun imagines he's in a vault somewhere counting all the money he'd made off of ramen. The thought makes him smile. Seunghyun smiles as he leaves the voice message. 

"Hi Seungri, it's TOP TOP TOP." He makes himself laugh with that. It's a bit pathetic, but nonetheless, he laughs. "It's been a while. I've missed you. And I love you, okay? You can go back to counting your money now." He hesitates. "Call me whenever. It's nothing urgent." 

He hangs up. 

Daesung picks up, and he sounds all excited and fraught with nerves, the way he tends to be before concerts. 

True to Seunghyun's analysis, Daesung huffs out his words almost too quickly to be understood, rustling sounds evident. "Ah, hyung you're alive! I promise you I'm so excited but I'm going on in 5 minutes so can I call you back in a few hours?" 

Seunghyun wants to say yes, but he also knows that he can't lie to Daesung, not the way he can to the others. Seunghyun can't say he'll talk to him later when he _knows_ there's no later. 

"No Daesung, I need to tell you this now but I promise I'll only be a minute, okay?" 

The rustling stops. "Are you okay? Do you need me to come to you?" 

Daesung has always been so incredibly loyal and _present_ , even when Seunghyun had done nothing to deserve it. 

"No, I'm fine! Don't worry about me. But listen, I love you, okay? I know I haven't been talking to you for a while, and I know when I l--I know it was sudden. But none of that means I love you less. None of it was because of you. I want you to live well, okay? Be amazing. Be fantastic. Don't ever let anything stop you--not YG, not Jiyong, and not me."

Seunghyun feels like he can't breathe, like he'll be gasping forever to catch up with everything he's said. 

Daesung sputters for a bit, until he hears a stage hand tell him he has to be up in a minute. "I love you too. And keep your phone close, okay? I need to go now but I'll message you after." 

The phone clicks before Seunghyun can respond, but he responds anyway, afraid that if he didn't it would be a lie. 

As he inches his way toward the edge of the railing, legs straightening until there was only one gentle push of the fingertips left to go crashing off the edge, he whispers. _Don't bother._ he says. _There will be no one left._

He pushes, lightly. His fingers are white with how tightly they are scrunched but he straightens them out. 

He pushes. 

It's only fair that the last people to hear him are the ones he spent 10 years memorizing the voices of. 

It's only fair the only place he remembered how to breathe in is where he breathes last. 

It's only fair that he finally gets to sleep after being so tired for so long. 

(When the newspaper runs the article about Seunghyun's suicide, Jiyong still hasn't forgiven him, Seungri still hasn't checked his voicemail, Youngbae still announces his wedding the next day, and Daesung still hasn't gotten around to sending that text.)


End file.
